Fourth Quarter 2020 Reading

[unJon]

On 10/17/2020 at 6:36 PM, Plessiez said:

 

As I said in the dedicated thread, I just finished The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab.  (Is there a precedent for titles of the form The [Adjective] Life of [Full Name] other than Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks?  It feels like both titles are references to something I'm missing.)

Now you’ve got me racking my brain and coming up blank. There’s also The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, which loosely fits. There’s also the potentially related pattern of The Curious [blank] of [blank]. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

I've followed up the Mabinogion with a deeper dive into medieval Welsh traditions. Just finished the Hergest Triads and the various poems contained in The Book of Taliesin. The Battle of the Trees may well be a Tolkienian influence.

(It's also amusing comparing medieval Irish manuscripts with Welsh ones. The Irish liked their cattle-stealing, pretty clothing, and sex. The Welsh liked their mead, Christianity, and fighting the Saxons).

[Zorral]

Interesting piece about Rebecca Roanhorse.

https://www.vulture.com/article/rebecca-roanhorse-black-sun-profile.html#_ga=2.77802525.864531191.1603214175-1287226932.1603214175

This bit particularly delighted this reader of the piece:

Quote

She drew on Diné stories she’d learned in law school (part of passing the bar to practice law in the Navajo Nation entails studying traditional stories).

Though, of course, that doesn't protect her from the accusations that she seriously overstepped these nations' prohibitions on sharing with outsiders stories and traditions that are carefully protected, private to those who have fulfilled the traditional requirements for telling these stories.

[dog-days]

5 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

I've followed up the Mabinogion with a deeper dive into medieval Welsh traditions. Just finished the Hergest Triads and the various poems contained in The Book of Taliesin. The Battle of the Trees may well be a Tolkienian influence.

(It's also amusing comparing medieval Irish manuscripts with Welsh ones. The Irish liked their cattle-stealing, pretty clothing, and sex. The Welsh liked their mead, Christianity, and fighting the Saxons).

I suddenly feel strongly inclined to investigate Irish medieval literature! 

[The Marquis de Leech]

1 hour ago, dog-days said:

I suddenly feel strongly inclined to investigate Irish medieval literature! 

Here's the online manuscript collection I've been using:

https://web.archive.org/web/20131230072118/http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/index_irish.html

I'd recommend starting with the Ulster Cycle (Cu Chulainn, et al), before doubling back to the Mythological Cycle.

[Plessiez]

20 hours ago, unJon said:

Now you’ve got me racking my brain and coming up blank.

Digging around a bit, I think James Thurber's short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1939) must be the original precedent.

[Luzifer's right hand]

I read the novella Dispersion by Greg Egan.

Pretty mainstream for him. The  physics are weird but the characters are human.

 I enjoyed it more than Zeitgeber his last Tor.com short story.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Finally finished 11/22/63. I wouldn't change a thing.

[LongRider]

On 10/19/2020 at 12:08 PM, Corvinus85 said:

Jumping right into its sequel, Children of Ruin.

I’ll be interested to hear what you think of this one.   

[RedEyedGhost]

On 10/17/2020 at 4:36 PM, Plessiez said:

As I said in the dedicated thread, I just finished The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab.  (Is there a precedent for titles of the form The [Adjective] Life of [Full Name] other than Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks?  It feels like both titles are references to something I'm missing.)

They also remind me of The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.  If they're referencing something else, then I'm missing it too.

[Teng Ai Hui]

Recently, I have being trying some short stories and novellas by a variety of authors -- Ursula Vernon, Kameron Hurley, and Stephen King.  They were all interesting, but I wouldn't exactly recommend them to anyone.

Just today, I acquired a copy of Heaven's River by Dennis E. Taylor (Bobiverse series, book 4), so I'm really excited to start it on my commute home from work.

[Plessiez]

On 10/21/2020 at 10:13 AM, Luzifer's right hand said:

I read the novella Dispersion by Greg Egan. 

Pretty mainstream for him. The  physics are weird but the characters are human.

I really like Greg Egan, but I'm always a bit surprised when I check his bibliography and realise how much of his fiction I've still not actually read.   As well as Dispersion, I've still got to read Instantiation (I have read "3-adica", but nothing else in the collection) and I think I've missed at least one other recent-ish novel as well (probably Zendegi, but I'm honestly not completely sure).

But I'm pretty tempted to try this, now:  I actually think "weird physics but human characters" is Egan's strong point (well, for values of 'human' broad enough to include the cast of Orthogonal, anyway, who obviously aren't technically human at all).  I've often seen it claimed that Egan can't write convincing or likeable characters, but I've never really thought that was true at all.

[Luzifer's right hand]

24 minutes ago, Plessiez said:

I really like Greg Egan, but I'm always a bit surprised when I check his bibliography and realise how much of his fiction I've still not actually read.   As well as Dispersion, I've still got to read Instantiation (I have read "3-adica", but nothing else in the collection) and I think I've missed at least one other recent-ish novel as well (probably Zendegi, but I'm honestly not completely sure).

But I'm pretty tempted to try this, now:  I actually think "weird physics but human characters" is Egan's strong point (well, for values of 'human' broad enough to include the cast of Orthogonal, anyway, who obviously aren't technically human at all).  I've often seen it claimed that Egan can't write convincing or likeable characters, but I've never really thought that was true at all.

I catched up on his works a few years ago and have read all novels except Zendegi and a few short stories. 

I visit his site on a regular basis and if a short story is avaliable on kindle or online I read it asap. 

I find his characters interesting. They are not always likeable I guess. He is not K. J. Parker. though and some of his characters are likeable. The more alien the more likeable imho.

[williamjm]

I finished Susanna Clarke's Piranesi. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is one of my favourite fantasy books so I was always going to be interested in Clarke's second novel. It's definitely a very different book to her debut, where that was long and packed with detail and a large cast of characters this is a much shorter book (it's a little over 200 pages) which doesn't even feature a single footnote. It's also got a much smaller cast, in one of the early chapters our narrator (who may or may not be called Piranesi) gives a complete list of all the 15 people who have ever lived in the world, 13 of whom are dead. His world is a seemingly endless structure consisting of many huge rooms most of them filled with statues, it's a fascinating setting and many of the journal entries in the book are devoted to the exploration of it. As the book goes on it also gradually fills in the backstory to explain how the lead character came to be there, it quickly becomes apparent that there are many things he is ignorant of.

It may be a very different book to Strange and Norrell but in its own way I think it is successful as the earlier story. The protagonist is a likeable character and his quest to try to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his existence make for a compelling story and I thought it had a satisfying ending.

I'm now reading Lois McMaster Bujold's Masquerade in Lodi, the latest of her Penric and Desdemona novellas (although it's set some years before several of the previous novellas). I always enjoy these stories and this one is no exception even if it does have a slightly more low-key plot than some of the others.

At one point in it a character does reminisce about once encountering a chicken which had been possessed by a demon, which did give a nostalgic flashback to the Goodkind threads.

[Gigei]

Just finished Fonda Lee's Jade City. It won the World Fantasy Award and was a finalist for the Nebula and Locus Awards. I can see why. It's very good.

I was hesitant about reading since I don't like gangster/organized crime fiction but picked it up on the strength of it being set in an Asian-inspired fantasy martial arts world.

Seeing as the Godfather-like plot is the whole point of the story, I can't complain that I find that sort of thing unlikeable since I knew that I was in for when I started reading. I found myself craving for a normal, non-gangster POV but, alas, it is what it is.

The only bad thing I can really complain about is that the first book is very open-ended. I get that it's just the first book in a planned trilogy but I wish there was more of an ending.

Hilo's POV is excellent. The contrast between his inner thoughts and motivations vs what he does and how other people see him is genius.

Spoiler

 

I mean, this violent hothead who's always eager to kill people actually, genuinely thinks that he is purely motivated by love for his family and that they should treat him nicer... wow.

"Hilo had long harbored the vaguely resentful suspicion that he loved his family more than they loved him back" - Hilo feeling underappreciated

"Lan used to beat the shit out of me when he was jaded and I wasn’t yet, did you know?" Hilo recalling how his brother beat him up but forgetting that Hilo was the one who always attacked and insisted in fighting

"That’s what he got, for trying to do his brother a favor." - Hilo complaining that he was scolded for trying to "help" by planning to kill his brother's ex-wife

 

His POV is like some trainwreck I couldn't look away from.

[Wilbur]

4 hours ago, williamjm said:

I'm now reading Lois McMaster Bujold's Masquerade in Lodi, the latest of her Penric and Desdemona novellas (although it's set some years before several of the previous novellas). I always enjoy these stories and this one is no exception even if it does have a slightly more low-key plot than some of the others.

At one point in it a character does reminisce about once encountering a chicken which had been possessed by a demon, which did give a nostalgic flashback to the Goodkind threads.

How did you get your hands on that?  Or are you reading it online via Amazon's reader?

[williamjm]

23 minutes ago, Wilbur said:

How did you get your hands on that?  Or are you reading it online via Amazon's reader?

It's a Kindle e-book. I do generally prefer physical books but it would be years until it came out in that format.

[bms295]

I read A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay this weekend to get into the Halloween spirit. Excellent book, loved how it ended. Ordered his Disappearance at Devil's Rock from Amazon last night, and I'm hoping to get to it before the 31st. I've had John Connolly's first Charlie Parker book, Every Dead Thing, sitting around for a while. Thought I'd try that next.

[Inkdaub]

10 hours ago, bms295 said:

I've had John Connolly's first Charlie Parker book, Every Dead Thing, sitting around for a while. Thought I'd try that next.

I am a huge fan of the Charlie Parker series and I hope you like it.  Every Dead Thing is sort of a strange book.  I'm not sure Connolly knew where he was going at that point...not unusual for a first book...so the plot is a bit different in pace or maybe construction.  If you end up reading them all you will see what I mean.  It's still a good book and it introduces the major characters.

I am about ten pages from finishing War which is the last book in Michelle West's House War set.  This brings my West re-read to a close and I am sad about it.  Thus having ten pages still to read.  That said...I have read fourteen West books straight and I am ready for something else.  No fantasy for a couple books I think.  I am thinking about that Mexican Gothic book.

[Peadar]

It's a veeeeeery long time since I read a Terry Pratchett book, but I'm just starting into Lords and Ladies.